WWE fans, people who were casual fans six years ago and stopped watching and those who just plain got caught up in the big-card hype: Welcome to MMA post-UFC 200!

I’m Bluedeanie, the resident GDT scribe and all-around feckless knucklehead. If you watched the prelims with us instead of just tuning in for the main card for Brock, you saw some extremely good and fun fights. But if I didn’t have any context for anything going on other than it was a big flagship card and Brock Lesnar was on it, I’d probably be pretty unsure if MMA is for me. This thread is to help put everything in perspective, tell you a little more about the fighters you saw and give you a few other things to watch or look forward to as you check out the wild world of cagefighting!

First off, why are you doing this?

For starters, UFC 200 was a card that we all knew was going to attract a lot of new posters and old lurkers, yet my OP for the GDT was admittedly a big huge in-joke for longtime fans that did little to share any meaningful coherent information about the fight card. UFC 200 had a lot of new eyeballs on it and many of them were posting in said GDT, but a lot of the discussion in the UFC thread tends to be pretty varied and often rife with jokes about the intricacies of Nate Diaz’ twitter account or whatever, and that’s not incredibly new-user friendly a lot of the time.
Mostly because we’ve always discussed making some sort of FAQ thread for newbies that we never followed up on because and the fact that the state of MMA changes fast enough that the thread would need to be redone frequently, so now I have a chance to do something like that yet inherently more topical while there are a lot of eyes on our 30% share of this already niche subforum. Plus people in the GDT have expressed interest in an effortpost about the fighters they saw Saturday night.
Also, I am quite frankly just a big nerd who loves both watching and writing about MMA; if my dumb words can trick you into watching this dumb sport instead of saying “that Daniel Cormier sure laid on that dude” and walking away forever, then I have done some good.

At any rate, let’s break down UFC 200 and where we can expect things to go from here.

Who are these girls?
Amanda Nunes is someone a lot of people slept on, and even regular posters didn’t recognize her by name despite almost surely having seen some of her fights before. Nunes is an extremely gifted and dangerous fighter who is prone to going for broke early on, as you saw in this fight. The results are typically a brutal finish in round one or gassing herself out terribly and losing in the later rounds when she is too tired to mount successful offense. She in fact won her first-ever decision in her last fight prior to UFC 200, and has only won three fights that have gone longer than one round. Quite frankly when she has gas in the tank, I think she is a threat to anyone in the division, longtime queen “Rowdy” Ronda Rousey included.

Tate gets a lot of flak on here for not being very good, and I think that’s at least slightly unfair. It’s true her only great attribute is her toughness (see how long it took Cat Zingano to put her away) but she is a Jill of all Trades who can win a fight in just about any way on a good night. She has tragically inconsistent-to-bad fight IQ, which has lead her to struggle against some truly awful Japanese fetish models who moonlight as part-time can-crushers, but she’s also been able to impose her will impressively against people at their own specialties and is on a very short list of women who survived longer than 60 seconds against Rousey. Frankly her durability alone speaks volumes to how dangerous Nunes can be, and it’s a bit of a shame that people will continue to laugh about how much she sucks when she only sucks maybe a little bit.

What did this fight mean for the future?
Women’s bantamweight has a long and somewhat well deserved history of being full of deeply flawed fighters having tragically lovely fights while then-champ Ronda Rousey ruled the belt with an iron fist. Since losing the belt and disappearing to recover from her injuries and her fight severe post-loss depression in the woods with her idiot boyfriend Travis Browne, the resulting power vacuum basically looked exactly like in Game of Thrones post-Ned Stark. The women’s bantamweight belt has yet to be successfully defended a single time in that frame, which kind of makes things seem exciting. Rousey isn’t anticipated to return until next year at this point so there will likely be another fight for the belt or two, which could possibly go to Holly Holm if she manages to look good in her next fight later this month, or maybe even Juliana Pena if they really want to rush her for some strange reason. As for Tate, she will probably get some middle-of-the-pack fighter or might get a rematch against fellow UFC 200 loser Cat Zingano.

What are some of their best fights?
For Nunes, check out her fights with Olympic Silver Medalist Sara McMann and professional Best Friend of Ronda Rousey Shayna Baszler.

For Tate, you can see her outwrestle the aforementioned Olympian McMann or watch her win the title from longtime boxing champ and Ronda Rousey slayer Holly Holm.

I like them. Who are some similar fighters?

Amanda Nunes’ style and penchant for wrecking early or dying late are incredibly similar to Vitor Belfort. If you want to see examples of other fighters who are just kind of quietly good enough to get by with a decent string of wins off of a well-rounded but unexceptional skillset, I am not sure why you’d want to go out of your way for that but Gleison Tibau is such a person.

Brock Lesnar def. Mark Hunt Decision (unanimous)

Who are these guys?
I won’t waste a lot of time writing about Brock Lesnar, because odds are if you’re perusing this thread then he’s the reason you came here in the first place. The WWE and NCAA wrestling champion broke into MMA in 2007 and went on the most insane and meteoric career trajectory we’ve possibly ever seen. He lost to former UFC champ and probable Hall of Fame candidate Frank Mir in his second-ever pro fight and two fights later had the belt. He was in and out of competition due to his diverticulitis but eventually lost the title to Cain Velasquez, and in his next fight was put away by K1 kickboxing champ and fellow steroid demon Alistair Overeem. The original Lesnar years were a wild ride and begged a lot of “what if” questions regarding his health problems, training methods and flawed but exciting skillset.

Someone said in the monthly UFC thread that if we wrote out Mark Hunt’s story, new fans would roll their eyes at how obviously fake and fan-fictiony it was. I am going to attempt to do so now in just a few paragraphs, but know that what I am writing is to the best of my knowledge and ability, completely accurate. Mark Hunt was born in New Zealand to some truly awful parents, including an alcoholic father who would viciously beat Mark and his brothers and systematically raped his own daughter over the course of several years. That kind of upbringing will unsurprisingly gently caress a person up, and it’s something he and his siblings have dealt with their whole lives — Mark’s known for mood swings and fits of melancholy and his brother tragically killed himself a few years ago, between that all and the fact that he’s probably a poster candidate for a CTE study it’s truly a miracle Mark is as functional as he is today. Anyway, the understandably troubled Hunt racked up a few jail terms in NZ for violent offenses, and that’s actually how he got into fighting — he got in a brawl outside of a nightclub where he beat the poo poo out of multiple people all at once, and one of the bouncers was impressed and invited him to train at his gym. A week later Hunt earned his first kickboxing KO victory, for which he was paid in beer. Hunt eventually landed in K-1, where he won the grueling World Grand Prix in 2001. Through K-1’s Japanese connections, he wound up sort of strong-armed by his management into fighting for Pride, then a major Japanese competitor to the UFC that had a different ruleset which included soccer kicks and knees to the head of downed opponents. There in Japan he discovered Dragonball Z, and taking a liking to the show, he dubbed himself “the Super Samoan” and began bleaching his hair blonde before every fight. He wasn’t really interested in MMA at the time despite his management’s insistence, so he just sort of trained as a kickboxer who was taking matches with weird, different rules. His negotiation tactics were also interesting, once sitting across the table from Pride boss Nobuyuki Sakakibara who spoke in Japanese about how they were going to dick Hunt over on his next contract without realizing Mark’s management was fluent. Hunt then threatened to throw Sakakibara from the window and was then allowed to name his own price. At any rate, as a result of his lack of true preparation for an MMA career he had a weird start, earning big wins over Wanderlei Silva and Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic but eventually going on a nasty 5-fight losing streak at the end of Pride’s time as an independent organization, in large part due to his poor takedown defense. The UFC bought Pride and eventually absorbed the promotion and its roster, at which point company president Dana White wanted to buy Hunt out of his remaining fights and release him to fight elsewhere, considering him a complete bust. Hunt refused and insisted he fight out his contract, which seemed like a bad idea because he lost his first UFC fight as well, bringing his poo poo streak up to 6. At that point, no one is sure what happened. Maybe years of secret training in keeping fights standing finally paid dividends, maybe Hunt simply decided losing sucked and refused to do it. Whatever it was, he hit an insane career renaissance in his late 30s and early 40s, having increasingly more great fights against increasingly more great competition and eventually even earning a (short notice interim) title shot with some all-time great bouts to his name. Hunt’s personal interests include competitive Counterstrike, eating KFC for breakfast and crashing shotgun weddings in Las Vegas.

What did this fight mean for the future?
Tragically not much. Lesnar’s fight was a one-off thing written into his WWE contract so he won’t even be eligible to take another UFC bout for another two years, if and when he should choose to sign with the UFC instead of another cush WWE run. It was really impressive that he still looked pretty decent despite the long layoff, but he just ended another two-fight streak for Hunt and derailed what might have been his last run for a shot at 42 years old, so for a long-term perspective for the sport it was kind of the most disappointing way the fight could have gone.

I like them. Who are some similar fighters?
If you want to see some steamroller wrestling somewhat similar to Brock, check out the late great Kevin Randleman. If you want to see high-level kickboxing applied to MMA, Alistair Overeem is a good place to start.

Daniel Cormier (c) def. Anderson Silva Decision (unanimous)

Who are these guys?
Daniel Cormier is the undisputed light heavyweight champion of the world. Some people consider his championship to be a paper belt because the previous champ, longtime king Jon “Bones” Jones, only lost his belt because it was stripped from him for his 7 millionth legal problem due to being a huge cokehead rear end in a top hat. In fact, Jones is Cormier’s only pro MMA loss and the rematch was intended to take place at UFC 200, before Jones was removed from the card on two days notice for his 7,000,001th instance of being a huge cokehead rear end in a top hat. It’s true that Jones is probably the greatest light heavyweight of all time, but them’s the breaks and Cormier’s the clear best guy who can actually actively maintain a fighting career without repeated issues. Cormier is an Olympian and an insanely decorated college wrestler, with six of his 10 total NCAA losses coming from Cael Sanderson who is widely considered to be among the best college wrestlers of all time. His striking is also dangerous as well, earning him many KO victories at heavyweight before he decided to clean up his diet a bit and make the cut down. It’s a shame that the way things are going he’s literally likely to be retired before Jones is able to return, because pasty nerds will argue that his “legacy” is tarnished as a result of never settling the score.

Former middleweight champion Anderson Silva took this very bad stylistic matchup for himself on just two days notice to help save a struggling card. That’s very commendable. I mean, I’d do a lot of things technically against my best interest for a surprise $600,000 paycheck I wasn’t expecting that weekend, but regardless, that’s legit. I mean it. Anderson’s kind of been a weird dick for much of his career so I am admittedly one of his chief detractors on here, and he’s also well into the sunset of his career, but make no mistake: people call him the greatest of all time, and he’s earned it. He holds the record for most consecutive UFC title defenses at 10, the most knockout of the night awards in the UFC at seven, the most finishes in the UFC at 14, and the longest win streak in UFC history at 16. His insanely elusive style of bobbing and weaving just outside of his opponent’s reach is some Matrix Muhammad Ali poo poo, and his ability to end a fight instantly off of a perfectly placed counter in the middle of such a display is also crazy. His biggest weakness is aggressive strong wrestlers (like Cormier.) This previously gave him problems in his first fight with Chael Sonnen, where the challenger dominated him for 23 minutes before Anderson pulled a triangle choke out of his back pocket to break what was then the record for latest submission win in the UFC. Oh, did I mention he was elusive? Because in that Sonnen fight he was hit more than in all of his UFC fights combined. That is insane. Anyway, you probably came into MMA at a bad time if you just got super excited by everything I wrote and want to see more from this guy. His title reign finally came to an end when he was knocked the gently caress out by Chris Weidman, and in their rematch he broke his leg in a terrible injury throwing a leg kick that Weidman checked and was out for rehab for over a year. He then returned to fight welterweight Nick Diaz in a kind of uninteresting decision victory, but that was overturned when he tested positive for multiple PEDs and banned anxiety medications, which he embarrassingly claimed could be traced to blue Thai dick potions he has to take to gently caress his wife. He then served another suspension and lost to now-champ Michael Bisping in his return from that, so ultimately Silva hasn’t won since 2012. That said, he is still a very dangerous fighter who will probably remain at least competitive with many people in the top 10 at middleweight.

What did this fight mean for the future?
This is also not a fight that meant a whole lot, truthfully. It wasn’t for the title due to the short notice, not that it would have changed hands anyway. Cormier will get to fight for his belt again, and Silva got to show that his chin is probably not completely gone and he is still extremely dangerous if you give him too much space to kick you in the liver, so maybe he’ll get a gimme fight next at middleweight. A lot of fans including in this thread unfairly felt the fight was just “lay and pray” when really it amounted to Silva was doing a pretty good job of preventing Cormier from getting a better position and Cormier was still hitting Silva with some biiiig shots to the head and body, so you did see some pretty good wrestling on display and that’s got me at least a little more excited to see whoever Cormier fights for the belt next — possibly the winner of Glover Teixeira vs. Rumble Johnson, which is coming up soon.

I like them. Who are some similar fighters?
Cormier’s training partner is the similarly skilled Cain Velasquez, who you saw earlier on this card.

Truly there are no fighters ever like Anderson Silva, but if you want to see other elusive but now over the hill counter punchers, look into his training partner and former LHW champ Lyoto Machida. If you want to see very dangerous strikers who can put you out with one crazy shot that you never saw coming, take a look at Carlos Condit.

Jose Aldo def. Frankie Edgar, Decision (unanimous)

Who are these guys?
Jose Aldo was the champion at featherweight for like six billion years, chewing up just about anyone he faced in that time and amassing a huge win streak. That all came to an end in just 13 seconds, when international superstar and obnoxious rear end in a top hat Conor McGregor knocked him out with one punch to take the belt and many fans’ unyielding adoration. It’s a shame it went that way. Aldo flew under the radar on many casual fans’ lits, being a low-key fighter in a division few people cared about who didn’t often say or do outrageous things that tend to grab your eye as a personality. The McGregor fight was his first supermassive payday with a ton of exposure, and since he got put away so quickly and so seemingly effortlessly many people laughed him off as a joke. He most certainly is not. Though his title defenses had few finishes, Aldo is an insanely dangerous guy with exceptional muay thai and a good (though rarely seen) BJJ ground game. His takedown defense is second to none and he’s got good killer instinct too, flying all over you the second he smells blood in the water. And despite his long career, he’s just 29 years old, so he’s still got some road ahead of him yet.

Frankie Edgar is a goon favorite, who’s had some classic all-time fights. He fought most of his career to date at lightweight, where he was actually very undersized but for many years was the smallest division in the UFC, so it was his only option. Despite that size disadvantage, he managed to beat Hall of Famer BJ Penn twice to earn and retain the UFC Lightweight belt. Unfortunately he eventually lost that belt in a close decision against Ben Henderson and a very bullshit robbery in the rematch, but at that point featherweight had become an option and he moved down where he was more appropriately sized. Had he beaten Aldo for the (undisputed) championship the first time they fought or the (interim) championship at UFC 200, he’d have become just the third person in UFC history to earn a belt in two different weight classes, after Heavyweight/Light Heavyweight Randy Couture and Lightweight/Welterweight BJ Penn. That’d have been some good poo poo, since he unfortunately also catches some poo poo among fans for not being as good as he truly is. He’s an all-around dangerous fighter who can chain wrestle you from anywhere in the ring or strike with you just as well, and he was another person who held one of the latest UFC submissions by tapping Cub Swanson with just a few seconds to go in the fifth and final round.

What did this fight mean for the future?
This fight wasn’t a big crowd pleaser but it was a crazy technical bout that showcased some very high levels of skill from both fighters. Aldo won the interim championship, officially putting Brazil back on the map to end the only 48-hour period of time without a Brazilian champion since Anderson Silva beat Rich Franklin in 2006. Ultimately this interim belt itself is a vaguely meaningless marketing ploy the UFC used to drum up excitement and get both guys to agree to a dangerous and potentially derailing rematch: the current champ Conor McGregor is perfectly capable of fighting but has taken a year off to go up in weight and chase a vanity rematch against Nate Diaz, who just finished him in a huge awesome upset as a short notice injury replacement for then-lightweight champ Rafael dos Anjos (with whom McGregor was originally slated to fight in a bid at becoming a two-division champ.) Aldo winning the IC means he will be next in line to fight McGregor if and when he should actually return to defend his belt, and it means the undisputed belt will default to him in the event that McGregor should somehow decide he’d rather leave the featherweight division entirely and move up to lightweight. Aldo winning is probably the slightly less interesting way for things to happen in terms of the future of the division, because while he was an insanely dominant longtime champion, he also got knocked out almost effortlessly in 13 seconds by McGregor and Frankie would have been a new compelling fight instead of a rematch. That’s not to say an Aldo rematch won’t be compelling though as if he can last longer he can certainly find a way to win, so we will see when that fight happens. Frankie’s loss means he’s likely back to the drawing board for a few fights and is unlikely to see another title shot until both Aldo and rising star Max Holloway have had their cracks at the true belt.

I like them. Who are some similar fighters?
If you like Aldo you might also be interested in former bantamweight champ and Billy Goat-eating goblin Renan Barao, who is not as good as Aldo (but don’t let the UFC marketing team hear you say that.) If you want scrappy short guys who fight with a lot of east coast heart, check out now lightweight champ Eddie Alvarez.

Cain Velasquez def. Travis Browne, Rd. 1 KOWho are these guys?
Cain Velasquez is a former two-time UFC champ, who currently is in a four-way tie for most successful consecutive heavyweight title defenses with Lesnar, Randy Couture and Tim Sylvia, at a whopping two. Though heavyweight has always been a revolving door, people have had a lot of hope to rule the division with an iron fist. He’s an insanely good wrestler with solid power — maybe not as much as most other heavyweights, but more than enough to get the job done. What’s perhaps most noteworthy about Cain is his cardio. He’s got an ability to push the pace hard for 25 minutes like almost no other heavyweight can. That made it all the more shocking when he gassed out in his second round of his last fight, losing the belt to Fabricio Werdum. Some people blame the fact that he was not acclimated to Mexico City’s crazy altitude (giving rise to the meme “Sea Level Cain”), some people blame his long layoff before the fight and Werdum’s strategy of working the body. The true answer is a combination of both, probably, but the layoff is perhaps what stands out most. Unfortunately for Cain and all of his fans, he trains at American Kickboxing Academy. It’s a gym that’s produced a lot of really great fighters including Daniel Cormier and former middleweight champ Luke Rockhold, but they have a habit of frequently sparring at 100% intensity there, as though Thursday night training practice was a true actual UFC title fight that just took place in front of 12 people for some reason. As a result, Cain has been injured longer than he’s fought in the now six years I have been following the sport. Since 2013, he has fought just two times, pulling out of fight after fight due to injury layoff. His knees are pretty drat shredded at this point too, which is another tragedy. His fight against Browne here was a return to form which is delightful to see and has me very cautiously optimistic about his next few outings, in 2025.

Travis Browne is a spastic weirdo who has incredibly unorthodox lovely striking technique, that has worked for him because he is athletically gifted and many heavyweights are bad. He is dating Ronda Rousey, which started when he was still married to a woman who has accused him of domestic violence. I will say he’s very tough, getting the poo poo kicked out of him against Alistair Overeem until rallying and winning by KO, so it is impressive he got put away. He is a bastard man and there is nothing I can write about him that will ever compare to Disgusting Coward’s excellent rant from the April 2014 UFC thread.

I loving know, right? Every morning waking up and realising that you're not one of the good fat fightmen like Hunto or Dos Santos, nor are you one of the likeable entertaining trashweights like Pat Berry or Joey Beltran. No sir, you're four pounds of misfiring motor neurons scraped along the inside of a 230lb Tiki themed turd golem and you're so innately unlikeable that even the notoriously racist PSPMMA will cheer a Brazilian just for hurting you. Every morning the dude probably tries to put the gun in his mouth but accidentally ends up flying crescent kicking it out the window when he gets a fit of The Brownes.

What did this fight mean for the future?
Honestly this was one of the more meaningful fights on the main card overall. Cain is back, baby — at least until he blows his knee out again because Daniel Cormier hit him with a sledgehammer in their weekly yoga session. Browne’s derailed for a bit but no top 10 heavyweight is ever more than a few wins from a title shot so we will still see him fight someone important — quite possibly Mark Hunt who should kick the poo poo out of him — and Cain got to look like he was back in form, so he might get a shot at a rematch with Werdum now that the latter is no longer champ either. Heavyweight is generally a garbage fire so either guy could conceivably get a title shot within the next few years if they’re able to stay active.

What are some of their best fights?
Cain’s best fights are probably the second or third fights with rival Junior Dos Santos, and the Lesnar fight always brings warmth and joy to my heart.

I like them. Who are some similar fighters?
I’ve already mentioned Cormier and Velasquez have their similarities. If you wish to see more Travis Browne fights I suggest visiting your local strip mall karate dojo on white belt night to see some spastic 14 year olds whose parents thought a hobby involving physical activity might get them to stop masturbating to so much Naruto hentai in the living room.

Well, this OP has already gotten insanely long, and I ran out of time this weekend to write more ahead of time, so stay tuned for a breakdown of the prelims and a new-fan-friendly FAQ/general breakdown of the UFC!

And we're back, to further look into the prelims! There weren't as many super big currently relevant names on these fights, but don't let that fool you: pretty much all of them had some degree of implications for their respective divisions.

Julianna Peña def. Cat Zingano, Decision (unanimous)

Who are these girls?
Julianna Peña is the first-ever female winner of the Ultimate Fighter, the UFC’s long-running reality-show format fighting tournament where finalists are given an impressive-sounding but ultimately mediocre six-figure UFC contract. On the show, she was coached by friend, training partner and now former Women’s Bantamweight Champion Miesha Tate. The Venezuelan Vixen was put on the injury roster almost immediately after winning the tourney, in an incident which she claimed was a severe case of vicious hazing by a jealous hater in her gym who shredded her knee. In reality it was an accident that she severely overblew. A big chunk of this match was contested on the ground which is at least somewhat unusual for her, as she’s known for a very aggressive high-offense low-defense striking approach where she wades in throwing hooks like they’re rocks at a wooly mammoth she needs to feed her cave family. That incident with the gym injury turns out to be a common problem for her too: she’s kind of an aggressive rear end in a top hat who goes around picking street fights and playing them off like they were someone else’s fault. That all said, she’s not the most likeable person and she’s probably due for a loss sooner rather than later, but she’s undefeated in her UFC tenure and Zingano was a fairly big win for her.

Poor Alpha Cat Zingano. To a degree, she’s a lot like Mark Hunt in that she’s had a rough go of it and you should feel bad she lost. She first got into martial arts as a single mother stood up by her baby daddy, seeing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ) as a way to get into shape and lose the baby weight. There she met her future coach and husband, Mauricio Zingano, who went on to adopt her kid and be a critical fixture in their lives. It turns out that Cat naturally took to jiu jitsu, and also picked up some Muay Thai (thai kickboxing) skills, eventually going pro. Cat made a name for herself in Invicta, a smaller Kansas City-based all-women’s MMA organization that operates as a quasi-official feeder league for the UFC’s now three women’s divisions. She’s an exciting fighter known for being a slow starter: after getting handled for a round and a half, she decides she’d rather win instead and kicks the poo poo out of her opponent in a big way. That exact thing happened in her UFC debut fight with Miesha Tate. Then a series of unfortunate events befell her. The winner of the Tate-Zingano fight was intended to coach alongside Peña’s season of the Ultimate Fighter, opposite then-dominant and growingly insanely popular champ Ronda Rousey. It’s a tradition on TUF that the coaches fight one another, so this would have been a huge amount of exposure for the opposite coach and an early opportunity at the coveted UFC belt. Then the day before filming was set to begin, Zingano blew out her knee and required surgery. The coaching spot went to Tate, who she straight destroyed in the third round, and she had to sit out on the sidelines to rehab for a year a year and a half. During this injury recovery, her husband committed suicide. After her recovery, Zingano faced now-champ Amanda Nunes. In typical fashion for both women, Nunes beat the tar out of Zingano for a round, then Zingano beat the tar out of Nunes for two and stopped her in the third with strikes. Cat says that first round left her with dizzy spells and light sensitivity for a month and she gained 30 pounds due to her hormones going crazy after taking hard punches to her pituitary gland. With this exciting win, Cat finally re-earned her title shot against Ronda Rousey. Learning from her past mistakes, Zingano said she knew she was a slow starter and if she wanted to beat Ronda — known for winning the majority of her fights in under 60 seconds — Cat would need to change that. As a result, she ran out of the gate and threw a flying knee at Ronda. Unfortunately, Ronda earned an Olympic bronze in judo and her signature technique is throwing her opponent to the ground and making them tap with an armbar submission, so hurdling toward her and sacrificing your center of gravity is perhaps the worst possible mistake you could make. 16 seconds later, she tapped and earned her first loss. She then took another year and a half to move to Thailand to train more intensively in her muay thai, and her return was tragically getting controlled on the ground by Peña, and she has to watch the belt be passed from one person she knocked out to another while sitting on the sidelines nursing a two-fight losing streak. It was very sad.

What did this fight mean for the future?
As I noted in the main card section of this thread, the women’s bantamweight title scene is wide open and ripe for the taking right now. Peña is still probably a hair too green for that right now, but Zingano was a big win, so if former champ Holly Holm manages to lose or look like complete poo poo in her upcoming fight, Peña probably has as strong a case as anyone else for a title shot currently. That said, a top five fight feels likely for her next.

Zingano more than anything deserves a big ol’ gimmie fight, Honestly there’s a number of lower-level fighters in that division Zingano can fight in a tuneup, but if Holm crushes Valentina Shevchenko later this month in Chicago, that might be a good candidate for her to name someone specifically.

I like them. Who are some similar fighters?
If you want to see a really aggressive idiot go whole ham with hooks like Peña but on waaaaaaay more steroids, Wanderlei Silva is your go-to guy. Zingano’s combo of muay thai and BJJ are extremely common in Brazilian fighters so you could almost throw a dart at a list and have a good comparison. Early Aldo actually is a good example a reverse Zingano who comes out extremely aggressively and puts fools away. Shogun Rua’s BJJ is overstated but his early fights when he was still healthy and had a functioning number of brain cells are a great showcase in extremely effective muay thai.

Kelvin Gastelum def. Johny Hendricks, Decision (unanimous)

Who are these guys?
This was an epic showdown between the chunkiest welterweights with the worst dietary discipline. Kelvin became the youngest man to ever win the Ultimate Fighter on the season coached by Jon Jones and Chael Sonnen, coming up strong on Kelvin’s team to defeat teammate and “The Next Anderson Silva” Uriah Hall. I’ve personally been super into Kelvin since that time, where he ate a shitton of hashbrowns before each fight and nearly died making weight, to the point that fellow contestant and UFC washout Jimmy Quinlan sat by his death bed and recounted the story of Star Wars by memory to take his mind off the pain. Though his weight management has lead to more than one failure to make weight for a fight — he was in fact briefly banished to middleweight by the UFC brass, where he ritualistically sacrificed Nate Marquardt to Jenny Craig — Kelvin has looked insanely impressive on good nights. He eventually had his undefeated streak snapped by Tyron Woodley and lost a really fun competitive fight with unlikely goon favorite Neil Magny, but many people around here have him pegged for a future champion of he can continue to improve and pull it all together. Handily beating a former champ like he did at UFC 200 is a strong example of why: Hendricks was a huge win.

If the Ghost of Christmases Yet to Come appeared to Kelvin in a Waffle House bathroom and showed him a morbidly obese, balding version of himself in the mirror, begging him to change his ways before it is too late and his career goes to poo poo, that reflection would be Johny “Bigg Rigg” Hendricks. That’s right, one N and two G’s. The former UFC champion and NCAA wrestling champ has fallen from extremely great heights, and it’s disappointing to see if not actually outright sad. Earlier on in his UFC career he developed monster power in his left hand, putting away some tough people who’d previously never even been knocked out before like Jon Fitch, so a lot of people were hyped up on him. After winning a fight of the year candidate with Carlos Condit, Hendricks earned his title shot against Georges St-Pierre, the longtime welterweight kingpin whose accomplishments, record and recognition as one of the greatest of all time truly rivaled that of Anderson Silva’s. GSP hadn’t had the most exciting title defenses ever, but he was insanely good at wrestling people, striking from the outside and overall completely controlling the pace of the fight and shutting his opponents down. Hendricks had enough of that poo poo and took the fight to Georges, fighting to a razor close split decision loss that many people (including yours truly) sincerely felt he should have won. Despite this, Hendricks lost a lot of fans on here who felt his response to the loss was excessively whiny. But even the UFC higher-ups agreed Hendricks probably could have edged it out, so after Georges effectively retired and vacated his belt following the fight, Hendricks was put in against all-time goon favorite Robbie Lawler for the vacant UFC welterweight belt. And what a fight it was. It’s legitimately one of the best ever. Hendricks walked away with his hand raised, and there the good times ended. He spent time on the shelf recovering from surgery on his bicep, and in the meantime Lawler had two great wins and came back for the belt when Hendricks was better. This fight gets a lot of flak for Hendricks’ decision to stall the action in two of the later rounds, but honestly it was still a pretty good fight from bell to bell all things considered. Hendricks probably should have won that fight too in my opinion, but the judges saw it for Lawler, and this was the beginning of the end. I believe forums poster manyak posited that Hendricks has never taken the losses well and at this point just lost his fire for fighting and gave up on it, and that may well be true. Johny has always struggled with his weight and gotten needlessly fat in his camps to make an already difficult weight cut for someone with his stocky frame even harder, but at this point it seemed he started outright ballooning. He even opened a now-failed steakhouse in an attempt to somehow make weight cutting easier, and has most recently attempted a strict diet of “fine Johny get the loving big mac but for the love of Christ don’t get fries, what do I know I’m just your goddamn nutritionist.” He had a boring fight with Matt Brown which should be drat near impossible, got knocked out impressively by rising star Stephen Thompson and then just lost to Kelvin. If he could get it together he should be game for anyone, but here we are.

What did this fight mean for the future?
As I said, despite everything I just said about Hendricks’ career trajectory, he was still a huge win for Kelvin; Gastelum is likely knocking on the door of a top five fight and has fairly firmly established himself as a legit top-10 mainstay. Hendricks, however, may have seen his best days besides him unless he gets his head out of his miserable rear end and starts putting it back together. It’s relatively unlikely he’ll be cut for a two-loss streak against top contenders and he only missed weight by a quarter of a pound, but altogether those things are not going to sit well with UFC President Dana White. If he does live to fight another day in the UFC, it won’t be against a very big name, and people are going to stop talking about Hendricks when they discuss the next big things at welterweight if they hadn’t already.

What are some of their best fights?
Kelvin’s got some sweet-rear end fights with Jake Ellenberger and Nate Marquardt.His season of TUF was all around cool to watch as well, and highlights from that are his fights with Bubba McDaniel and Josh Samman.

I like them. Who are some similar fighters?
Both guys are both squat strong wrestleboxers, as are the majority of welterweights actually. You could look up prime Ellenberger or career resurgence Lawler and get some reasonably similar fights.

TJ Dillashaw def. Raphael Assuncao, Decision (unanimous)

Who are these guys?
TJ Dillashaw’s had a really fun career. He was a finalist on the Ultimate Fighter who got knocked the gently caress out by John Dodson, a tiny little imp who went on to be arguably the Number 2 Flyweight of All Time before returning to bantamweight after realizing he’ll never beat the flyweight champ, Mighty Mouse Johnson. Dillashaw originally trained at Team Alpha Male, a Sacramento-based frat house MMA gym specializing in working with smaller dude fighters, and it had a reputation — more of a curse, really — of having a lot of the second-best fighters in the division, a bunch of dudes who were extremely dominant but could never quite win the big fights when they count. Dillashaw seemed to fight right in that niche. After losing he went on a four-fight finishing streak of really fun fights, and then was derailed by a split decision loss in his first Fight-of-the-Night winning match with Assuncao. He then had an unnoteworthy decision win over Mike Easton (member of a terrible camp full of rapists and assholes, but we can decry them another time) and he got a phone call most fighters relish — the champ’s opponent is hurt and he’s already beaten everyone else, we need you in there. Dillashaw was now set to fight Renan Barao, a Brazilian standout who at the time was being heralded as a pound-for-pound great. Barao had a crazy 32-fight not-losing streak (he had a No Contest in there) and had already twice beaten Urijah Faber, the Team Alpha Male leader and an all-time great in his own right. No one expected for Dillashaw to have poo poo for him. TAM had a new striking coach, however: former UFC welterweight journeyman Duane “Bang” Ludwig. Dillashaw apparently absolutely flourished under Bang’s leadership, because he waltzed into that cage and made Barao look helpless. He whooped Barao from pillar to post before finally putting him away in the fifth and final round, and everyone went apeshit. TAM finally had a belt, and it was a kid that no one had been paying any meaningful amount of attention to whatsoever. The “no shirt, no shoes, no problem” party raged for weeks, but unfortunately it had to come to an end sometime. Faber and Ludwig apparently didn’t see eye to eye, and Ludwig left to start his own gym in Colorado. For his similarly lopsided rematch with Barao and extreme short-notice fight with confused baby Joe Soto, Dillashaw split his camps between Team Alpha Male and Ludwig’s new camp Elevation Fight Team. It was super dramatic, now Faber hated Dillashaw and accused him of taking PEDs, they wanted to fight, it was childish. It would soon be almost forgotten as Dillashaw took a fight with the long-awaited returning former Bantamweight champ Dominick Cruz. Cruz owns, but his insane footwork and speed apparently came at a cost of his tendons, because he had multiple ACL tears that forced him out repeatedly and forced him to vacate his belt, making then-interim champ Barao the undisputed champ. Cruz showed up against Takaya Mizugaki and destroyed him in under a minute, and then loving pulled his groin and had to sit out for another year. But finally he was back for his belt. He and Dillashaw actually had pretty similar styles, evasive footwork and great use of angles to land shots, so it was a really compelling match that in my opinion proved to be the best fight of the year so far. It was great, and Cruz won a split decision that Dillashaw and I both agreed with: Dillashaw felt he won, and I felt Cruz should have gotten the unanimous nod. Now Dillashaw is ready to get back to the top of the heap.

Raphael Assuncao is a solid fighter but he also sat out for a while, missing all of 2015 due to injury. It got to a point where I was fairly confident he wasn’t real and just a strange figment of our collective imagination to make Dillashaw seem more human. He was knocked out in his UFC debut by the flawed but dangerous Erik Koch and had a choppy 3-2 run in the WEC, but pulled together a pretty impressive seven-fight win streak including Dillashaw and fellow contender Bryan Caraway. Another win over the now much-improved former champ Dillashaw was going to put Assuncao over into clear contendership territory, but alas it was not to be.

What did this fight mean for the future?
This fight was pretty important for the future of the 135-pound men’s division, which is slightly short on contenders at the moment. It would have probably been more interesting for Assuncao to win because it’d be better for Cruz to get new opponents rather than the same two people he’s fought for the past 80 years due to his off time, but we’ll take what we can get. Due to the “controversy” involved in their last fight, Dillashaw feels like the most clear challenger for Cruz at this point, while Assuncao is still poised well enough to take another top 10 fight and remain in the mix within the near future.

What are some of their best fights?
Their first fight against one another was good.

You should absolutely watch both Dillashaw vs. Barao 1 and 2, and even though he lost, Cruz vs. Dillashaw was super good too.

I like them. Who are some similar fighters?
As I mentioned, Dominick Cruz is like Final Form TJ Dillashaw. Former TAM teammates Urijah Faber and Chad Mendes are worth checking out too, although their styles all vary from his in some key areas.

Assuncao has sort of the quintessential well-rounded Brazilian style. Rafael dos Anjos is a cool guy to see that in action at the highest levels.

Sage Northcutt def. Enrique Marin, Decision (Unanimous)

Who are these guys?
Super Sage Northcutt is the subject of much goon adoration, and not exclusively because he fulfills our wildest and most gay sexual fantasies. Sage was discovered on Dana White’s web series “Lookin’ for a Fight,” where in a format somewhat similar to “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives” he traveled the countryside with former Welterweight champion and trash-eating troll Matt Serra in the quest for an opponent lovely and green enough to face CM Punk. They immediately decided Sage was too good and marketable to waste on Phil Brooks’ retirement passion project, and signed him directly into the UFC at just 19 years old. He’s showed a crazy amount of potential and natural talent. His striking is pretty legit, especially for someone with as little MMA experience as he has, though this can be traced to the fact that he’s been trained for competitive karate since he was like 5 by his literal steroid and cocaine dealer father. A devout Christian and proud American, Sage’s twitter is a national treasure, where he chronicles traveling the roads by car to support our nation’s highway and toll systems and learning the fascinating history of the landline telephone. Unfortunately his ground game is virtually nonexistent, which he showcased by getting taken down by the very bad Cody Pfister and later getting taken down and submitted by the likeable but not great Bryan Barbarena, for which he went on to blame strep throat. Sadly his primary coach is still his father, and that is proving to be a very bad influence for him. Upon showcasing his talent, Sage was immediately contacted by Tristar, a world-class Canadian gym and home to the aforementioned welterweight legend Georges St-Pierre. Northcutt trained there temporarily until his father, sensing the impending end of his golden meal ticket, convinced Sage to leave immediately because it was “too much for where he was in his career right now.” Sage’s dad is also notorious for allegedly yelling at fighters from other teams and gyms who work with Sage to help develop his striking game further for “going too hard,” even though they were doing fairly light and reasonable sparring. This guy does have a huge ceiling on a long enough time frame, but he needs to make better choices to reach it.

The UFC has a vested interest in bringing Sage up slowly, so Marin is a prime example. The Spaniard was the runner-up of the not-particularly good The Ultimate Fighter: Latin America 2, dropping a split decision to Erick Montaño. He really isn’t great and is now 8-4 in MMA, and 0-2 as a UFC professional. That’s exactly the sort of level Sage should be getting matched at in this point of his career, so no huge surprises there.

What did this fight mean for the future?
For the immediate future of their division, pretty much nothing. Sage Northcutt will continue his rise through the UFC, but his pace has already slowed from “potentially meteoric” to “crawl.” The UFC invested a lot of marketing muscle behind Sage and are paying him way better than anyone else at his experience level, so they aren’t going to rush him into more than he can handle, and considering the Barbarena fight and how close Marin came to submitting Sage multiple times that could still possibly be any given unranked lightweight at this point. He’ll get someone else you’ve never heard of, and if Marin doesn’t outright get released from the UFC roster, he’ll fill the undercard against some bum. Meanwhile, any relevant fighter or matchup will never feel the ripple from any of this.

What are some of their best fights?
Sage’s bouts with Francisco Trevino and Cody Pfister are worth a peep. I am not convinced Marin has any worth seeing that are readily available on the internet.

I like them. Who are some similar fighters?
If you like flashy karate poo poo but want to see someone good do it instead, watch Stephen “Wonderboy” Thompson fights. You can check the b league prelims for your fair share of Enrique Marins, and quite possible Enrique Marin himself within the year.

Joe Lauzon def. Diego Sanchez TKO (rear end-whoopin’) rd. 1

Who are these guys?
Another fight between TUF alums, Joe Lauzon has had some loving amazing fights since coming into the UFC out of TUF 5, probably the most entertaining and talent rich season of all time. Lauzon’s also known as being an early starter who fades as fights go on, but his style is extremely fan friendly. He hits really hard, he’s got great jiu jitsu that leads to flashy scrambles and awesome sub wins, he is all around an insanely cool guy to watch. With his bonus for his performance against Sanchez, Lauzon is currently tied for most UFC post-fight bonus awards with fellow TUF 5 alum and season winner Nate Diaz, at an unfathomable 17. That puts them ahead of GOAT Anderson Silva. He’s getting up there in fight years and unfortunately was never quite good enough to put on a title run, but in his 37 fights, even in his losses Joe usually comes out looking cool as hell. I can’t talk this guy up enough, you’re not getting championship caliber but you should be tuning into every drat fight this guy puts on.

Diego Sanchez is the FIRST TUF winner, beating eventual three-division title challenger Kenny Florian at middleweight to win the inaugural season. Diego Sanchez was long thought to be literally too stupid to be KO’d, but he managed it against Lauzon which goes to show you how much deceptive power Creepy Joe can pack. Diego is a crazy motherfucker. Daniel Bryan admittedly blatantly lifted the “YES! YES! YES!” thing from Sanchez, who chants it before each fight and even does it in his patented “Yes Cartwheel” to harness nature’s positive energy or some insane horseshit. He went undefeated for his first 17 pro fights as a well-rounded guy with big power and solid wrestling, before finally getting wrestled to death in back-to-back fights by the AKA Lay-and-Pray Dream Team Josh Koscheck and Jon Fitch. He’s definitely slowed down, lost a step and let the sport catch up to him though. After an extremely bloody title fight loss to Hall of Famer BJ Penn, Sanchez started bouncing back and forth between lightweight and welterweight pretty consistently, and recently even took a stab at featherweight. He hasn’t been on a winning streak since 2011, and outside of the Jim Miller fight he hasn’t actually won a decision he deserved since 2010. Sanchez’ style of coming forward extremely aggressively and not seeming to react to huge bombs landing on and about his face have lead many judges astray from the right decision, so in a way it was really good to see him finally get stopped so there was no risk of that. He’s eaten a fuckton of punishment in the last few years though, so we pretty much all wish he’d actually hang them up.

What did this fight mean for the future?
Creepy Joe proved he’s still got a little left in the tank to be able to put away Sanchez like that, but neither of them were anywhere near the rankings at lightweight and rightfully so. Joe will live to fight another day for sure, and probably get a better level name out of this fight, if he wants it. I am not fool enough to believe Diego’s intelligent and sane enough to realize he should retire at this point, and the UFC probably won’t release him to go make money for Bellator or some other promotion, so it’s hard to say who he gets. He’s in a weird position where his name value demands an opponent who also has a name, but he is not good enough to deservedly beat many people in that category. He could possibly get a rematch against Takanori Gomi, who he robbed a few years ago.

What are some of their best fights?
This is legit the hardest one to list, because it’s drat near impossible not to just post 90% of their careers. For Joe, I have to plug his bout with former WEC champ Jamie Varner and his Melvin Guillard bout.

I like them. Who are some similar fighters?
You like crazy flawed guys who go in and chase a finish or die trying? Who doesn’t? Check out Stefan Struve and Chris Leben’s fights.

Gegard Mousasi def. Thiago Santos TKO (punches) 1

Who are these guys?
Gegard Mousasi is an Iranian-born fighter of Armenian descent who grew up in Holland. Confused? Me too. Apparently the Dutch thing overrides the Iranian and Armenian thing because Mousasi is noted for being extremely, unflappably chill at all times, including during fights. This has endeared him to many fans on SomethingAwful, despite having a fairly inconsistent career. He’s fought everywhere from heavyweight to middleweight, and made a name for himself in the Japanese circuit before finally getting signed to fight in the UFC with wins over Mark Hunt of all people, the terrifyingly powerful Melvin Manhoef (the first person to ever KO Mark Hunt in MMA) and current middleweight contender Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza. Mousasi has turned in some truly great performances and some snoozers. He hovers right around a narrow skill level between “high level gatekeeper” and “low level contender,” meaning if you can beat him you’re (probably) really good but he can beat people who are fairly good as well. The notoriously iron-chinned Mousasi was recently TKO’d by a beautiful flying knee from the wildly inconsistent Uriah Hall, and Mousasi’s next outing was a pretty boring unremarkable fight with longtime journeyman Thales Leites, so a big performance here at UFC 200 was pretty important for him to remain a potential contender in people’s eyes, and he really delivered.

Mousasi himself said Thiago Santos was a guy who didn’t have a name but was a dangerous fight he needed to take seriously, and he was right. Santos has a name so generically Brazilian he has to be listed on wikipedia as ”Thiago Santos (middleweight fighter)” but don’t let that fool you, he’s been on a drat tear lately. His start in the UFC was a rocky win-one-lose-one affair for a bit, but Mousasi snapped a four-fight streak including a massive head kick KO over durable hockey goon Steve Bosse and an impressive KO victory over Nate Marquardt. Santos is a really dangerous, powerful striker with a very crafty submission game, so this was a good win for Mousasi.

What did this fight mean for the future?
Mousasi gets to remain on the fringe of the mix at middleweight, which is also an incredibly interesting division with a lot of interesting matchups in the three years since Anderson reigned. A ranked fighter for him next is not entirely out of the question. It wasn’t a terrible loss for Santos, though — a win over Mousasi would have been a big step up and his ticket to another name opponent on a higher-profile spot on the card, but a loss to a guy like him isn’t super shameful and he’ll get another chance to amass a nice big impressive win streak against middling fighters. While Santos winning would have been a shot of fresh blood into a fun division, was not the worst thing that could have happened by any means.

What are some of their best fights?
Mousasi turned in some big wins over beloved UFC fighter and elderly grandfather Dan Henderson, a good showing over B-league staple Sokoudjou a really sweet KO over Jacare that was eventually avenged in the UFC.

I like them. Who are some similar fighters?
It’s hard to name another fighter who fights exactly like Mousasi, but he does use a lot of judo, and if you’re into that you should for sure be looking at Ronda Rousey, Karo Parisyan and Yoshihiro Akyiama.

Jim Miller def. Takanori Gomi TKO (punches) 1

Who are these guys?
Jim Miller is another long-time goon favorite who never quite cracked a title shot, but for the majority of his career his only losses were to UFC champions or title challengers. He’s probably over the hill but this was another opportunity where a fighter had a chance to prove they still had some gas in the tank and he delivered. Miller is a BJJ black belt and is incredibly dangerous on the ground. He’s had some amazing fights as well, and walks out to CCR for the majority of his fights which is also cool. It was really good to see him win, especially knowing some of that money was probably going to help his brother, former UFC fighter Dan Miller, take care of his ailing kid who has a rare kidney disease.

Takanori Gomi is one of the very few remaining fighters from the Pride era, where he was the only lightweight champion. The Fireball Kid had a lot of really fun fights and is a longtime favorite of regular poster david charmichael, but he hasn’t exactly done well for himself in the UFC, going 4-7 now with the promotion. There are a lot of reasons for this. In part he’s just older and more beat up. In part he’s fighting much better fighters than the cans he faced in Pride. In part he is by all accounts a raging alcoholic who shows up to his training camp with a backpack full of beer and cigarettes. Either way, the guy’s a Japanese legend but he’s far past it.

What did this fight mean for the future?
Not a lot either. Jim Miller proved he’s got some of the old magic and will get another fight. Gomi’s on a three-fight losing streak and that kind of territory is where the UFC starts releasing you from your contract, but he’s just enough of a name that it’s possible he’ll be kept on board for another fight with an aging fan favorite to pump a bit more interest out of the east.

What are some of their best fights?
Definitely watch Millers’ fight with Joe Lauzon (see a trend here?) Another good one is his bout with Yancy Medeiros.

I like them. Who are some similar fighters?
If you like a scrappy guys with great jiu jitsu, check out the Diaz brothers, Nick and Nate.
If you like a brawler like Gomi who does very well under Japanes rules, check out Daron Cruikshank.

Bluedeanie fucked around with this message at Jul 12, 2016 around 00:24

If you want to be pedantic (and many people both in Rowdy Ringsports and in the sport itself do) you can arguably trace MMA all the way back to the ancient Greek bloodsport of pankration, and if that’s too distant for you, you could trace it to things like vintage pro wrestling shoot matches or old-school “master vs. master” exhibition bouts like Muhammad Ali vs. Antonio Inoki. “Judo Gene” LeBell, who himself was the referee in Ali vs. Inoki, likes to claim he was in the “first ever MMA match” when he won a bout in 1963 with boxer Milo Savage after fellow boxer Jim Beck issued a $1,000 challenge that a boxer could defeat any practitioner of another martial art in a straight fight.

MMA as we understand it today really began to form in 1993, when pay-per-view broadcasting pioneer SEG aired an eight-man “no holds barred” one-night fighting tournament called The Ultimate Fighting Championship, which really was not all that dissimilar to the LeBell-Savage stunt. The goal was to pit eight practitioners of various martial artists against one another in a tourney format to “determine” the baddest dudes and best styles; it was won by Royce Gracie of the Gracie Family, a martial arts dynasty that developed the Brazilian style of jiu jitsu. In some ways that night set the tone for the future of MMA training and talent development — everyone seemed to realize that submission grappling was a really strong base as it provided a problem that no pure striker really had an answer to at the time, plus it can be seen as the catalyst for there being so many fiercely nationalistic Brazilian fighters in MMA who came to view Royce as something of a folk hero. In time it was bought out by Zuffa and cleaned up from being super unregulated kumite bullshit to the growing institution you see today.

What are the rules? How does it work? Why does the fight end when that guy slaps the other guy’s arm or leg like that?
Under the Unified Rules, professional MMA consists of five-minute rounds with a one-minute break between each round. In the UFC, most fights are scheduled for three rounds, while all title fights and most main events are scheduled for five rounds. There are a lot of rules and specific things that I could spend quite a while naming, but the big ones are fighters aren’t allowed to eye gouge, fishhook, bite, strike the groin region, pull hair, hit their opponent in the back of the head, kick or knee the head of a downed opponent, grab the fence, etc. Fights can end in one of many ways:Knockout/technical knockout: If a referee determines a fighter has been rendered unconscious by strikes or is unable or failing to intelligently defend themselves from an opponent’s strikes, the referee can separate the fighters and wave the fight off in favor of that fighter’s opponent. If a fighter is straight up out cold it’s typically called a KO, if they were technically conscious but not doing much more than being pummeled ceaselessly it’s typically called a TKO. The difference between a KO and TKO is sometimes incredibly nuanced and virtually impossible to really differentiate, but they both have the same effect in ending the fight.Submission/technical submission: In this case, the fighter wins if they get their opponent in a successful submission lock — common ones include the rear naked choke, the guillotine choke and the armbar, though there are all sorts from various disciplines and of varying complexity and rarity. Here the difference between a sub and a technical sub is a lot more straightforward: if the fighter indicates they cannot escape and wish for things to end before something bad happens to them, they tap out to indicate to the ref it is time to stop the fight and declare their opponent the winner. In a technical submission, the referee had to step in before you because you failed to tap before you went unconscious or — much less pleasantly but thankfully far more rarely — go to sleep or break/severely hyperextend a limb or other body part. I can’t stress this enough as some people in the 200 GDT seemed confused that submissions happened so fast and ended the fight simply because “a fighter couldn’t escape” and suggested solutions like “making them worth fewer points so fights can be more interesting.” It isn’t a matter of simply being unable to escape, otherwise fighters would get submission wins for ugly high school wrestling pins. It is a matter of being stuck in a grappling position from which you cannot escape and the consequences of remaining in that position are dire enough that you need to declare yourself the loser for the overall sake of your health. Subs are oftentimes pretty cool!Doctor’s stoppage: Ringside doctors frequently check fighters in between rounds if they took a bad beating, and sometimes the ref will even call a time out during a pause in the action to have a fighter inspected by the ringside physician should they be concerned. If the doctor declares the fighter unfit to safely continue, the fight will be waved off and their opponent will be declared the victor. Doctor’s stoppages are most commonly seen for bad cuts that are bleeding into a fighter’s eyes or for an eye that is swollen shut to the point that a fighter cannot see out of it, though sometimes they call fights for other injuries or causes for concern like Jamie Varner’s nasty ankle break against James Krause.Retirement/corner stoppage: Sometimes a fighter is too beat to poo poo or too exhausted to return from their corner break and either fails to answer the bell or explicitly quits on the stool. Other times their corner (coaches and teammates who offer advice between rounds) call the fight on their behalf, either between rounds or rarely during the round. This is often signaled by throwing in the towel like in boxing, although some nerds like to argue about whether that is truly a legal means of ending a fight according to the rules as written.No contest: No contests are ruled if something fucky happened during the fight that makes it impossible for a fight to continue but also impossible to legally declare someone the winner. 99% of the time this is due to a foul that the referee determined was unintentional (like an accidental eye poke or groin shot) that unfortunately the receiving fighter was unable to recover from within their five-minute foul recovery period. You will also frequently see athletic commissions render No Contests retroactively if the winner fails a drug test. Basically the fight becomes null and void and does not count as a win or loss on either person’s record.Disqualification: the No Contest’s uglier and rarer cousin, the DQ comes when a foul was in fact determined to be intentional, malicious or reckless (say a fighter gets warned for throwing their hand out like a monkey paw after poking their opponent 15 times and on the 16th time it does enough damage for them to call it.) The offending fighter is declared the loser and the poor broken person who’s eye fell out is the winner. Justice!
And then there’s the dreaded judges decision. This has many forms and rules so it gets its own special category!

How does judging work?

If a fight reaches the end of the allotted time and these none of the aforementioned things have transpired*, we go to the judge’s scorecards. First, let’s look at who the judges are, and how the fights are scored.

Judges are selected by the athletic commission presiding over the event (more on that later) and there are three judges sitting at separate points ringside during each fight. Judges review fights using a 10-point must system, which means the winner of reach round gets 10 points and the loser gets nine or fewer points. Exceptions to this are if a referee docks points from a fighter for fouling, which judges register on their scorecards for the round in which the deduction took place, or much more rarely if a judge scores a fight a 10-10 draw. At any rate, the judges score bouts on the following criteria *Mike Goldberg voice*:STRIKING: Judges score fights first and foremost on effective striking. This is determined by considering things like volume, accuracy and power.

GRAPPLING: Effective grappling is the next thing judges are to consider when determining a winner for each round. This includes things like takedown success and positional dominance or control.

AGGRESSION: Following striking and grappling, judges are asked to consider who actually pressed the action and was the aggressor in each round.

AAAND OCTAGON CONTROL: The final criteria, “octagon control,” basically amounts to what it sounds like — effective footwork and the ability to control where in the cage the action is taking place. You kind of saw this at play in Aldo vs. Edgar: Edgar moved forward a lot but Aldo was more effective in moving backwards. He never let Frankie back him into a corner or cut off his movement, so Aldo was never really stuck somewhere he didn’t want to be for any prolonged period of time.

So there’s the ruleset. Let’s look at different options for a judge’s decision, as there’s oftentimes confusion here as well.Unanimous decision: This means all three judges agreed on the winner. Note this doesn’t mean all three judges and the same scorecard, as oftentimes they might differ on who won what round. (This is especially relevant in close five-round fights, as there’s more opportunity for difference of opinion on a per-round basis without dissenting on the winner.)Split decision: This occurs when two judges score the fight for one person, determining them to be the winner by majority opinion, but one judge disagreed and gave the fight to the loser. This is not uncommon in very close fights, but oftentimes it happens because one judge just happened to be very bad at judging fights. Majority decision: A majority decision is a lot like a split decision, except instead of one judge scoring the fight for the other person, one judge scores the fight a draw. This is pretty uncommon and usually will happen because of a point deduction.Draw: Draws happen when for various reasons the fight was close enough that you could not determine a winner. If we see a unanimous draw it will almost invariably be because a referee’s point deduction brought what would have been the unanimous decision-winning fighter’s score down to tie with the losing fighter’s. There are other kinds of draws though. There’s the split draw, where Judge A scores the fight for Fighter A, Judge B scores the fight for Fighter B, and Judge C scores the fight a draw. Then there’s the majority draw where two judges score the fight a draw and one judge scores the fight decides there’s a winner, but this is uncommon enough that we’re getting into Quantum Judging Theory just talking about it.

*Although rare, there is such a thing as a “technical decision.” If a fight-ending foul occurs after the halfway point of the match, rather than calling it a no contest the ref figures the judges have seen enough to basically call the fight early and ask the judges to render a scorecard for the amount of fighting that happened. This is considered more fair as there was still enough of a fight to judge, and sometimes the fouled fighter is actually the one winning so that gets recognized instead of a NC appearing on their record. This is very uncommon, you could watch high-level MMA for years and never see it. One example is Michael Bisping winning after poking Alan Belcher in the eye so badly at 4:29 of the 5th round that Belcher retired afterward.

Why do you all poo poo on the judges so badly?

Because they are fairly frequently observably bad to the point that pretty much the entire viewing public clearly has it one way, but two or sometimes even all three judges score it the other way. Odds are if people know your name as a judge, it’s not a good thing. Here’s looking to you, Adalaide Byrd and Sal D’Amato. The lone exception here is Greco Roman Olympic gold medalist Jeff Blatnik, who was such a consistently good judge he was posthumously inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame.

Bad judges often stick around because like any government agency, athletic commissions are rife with nepotism. Adalaide Byrd looks like the lady with the huge glasses who Joe Pesci debunked as a witness in “My Cousin Vinny” and she judges both MMA and boxing exactly like you’d expect that character to, but her husband is World Boxing Hall of Fame ref and judge Robert Byrd so she likely has a job with Nevada for as long as she cares to. In the interest of fairness, MMA is a much less cut-and-dry sport to judge than, say, boxing, and while most fans would kill for cageside seats so they can feel the blood and sweat flying off their favorite fighters, there’s no such thing as the best seat in the house for someone who is actually actively trying to score a fight. Judges are only watching the fight from one seat on the floor and each judge is at a different spot, so while the viewers at home or up in the nosebleeds where they can see the jumbotron have the advantage of the shot rapidly shifting to the camera with the best view of the action, judges do not. So if a fighter is in a position where their back is to the judge and they throw a combo, that judge is going to have a hard time determining if those shots landed flush, if their opponent defended them really well, if they were wildly inaccurate and mostly hit their opponent’s biceps or what. So tbf I can understand a handful of bad or screwy decisions.

If the judges are so bad, why doesn’t the UFC fire them and hire better ones or change the rules?

Because that’s not how it works. Like I noted above, referees and judges are not employees of the promotion, but appointed through the state. Sanctioned professional MMA bouts take place under the purviews of the athletic commission of the state in which the bout takes place. One of the biggest is Nevada’s seeing as many huge title fights and major PPVs for both boxing and MMA take place there, but California’s is a big deal too. These commissions (when actually doing their job, anyway) enforce the rules, apply sanctions for failed drug tests and other problems, make sure fighters are healthy enough and medically cleared to fight before issuing fight licenses, oversee promotions and ensure they follow safety standards, and hire regulatory officials — this includes referees and judges. (The UFC occasionally does shows in smaller states or foreign countries like Japan that do not have their own official athletic sanctioning bodies, in which case the UFC actually self-regulates and brings in many of the same refs and judges you see working cards in Vegas or LA. While this sounds like it’d present an opportunity for some super shady bullshit on the UFC’s part, surprisingly by all accounts they handle this very well and let things carry on as unabated as possible. This is probably due to the fact that “commission shopping” is a pretty drat good way of getting blacklisted from being allowed to do shows in your huge consistent money markets so they want things to go as professionally and above-the-table as possible regarding regulatory affairs.

That all sounds pretty neat. Who is the Ultimate Fighting Champion?

Well, there are several champions, one for each weight class. In fact, sometimes there are TWO for each weight class, based on the increasingly transparent marketing whims of the UFC! So I will share with you a current list of champions as well as contenders and rising stars in each division. Please note that MMA changes very rapidly and this list could be laughably obsolete tomorrow and without a single fight even happening, based on any number of injuries, conduct problems or other tomfoolery.

Heavyweight: 206-265 lbs
Historically an awful division of great big fat guys who were not athletic enough to go into safer or more stable sports, heavyweight actually owns if you go into it with tempered expectations.

Light Heavyweight: 205 lbs
This division is secretly even worse than heavyweight. Many people don’t realize this as it had a long period of being a marquee division for the UFC, mostly due to having a poo poo-ton of aging and deeply flawed but very popular and marketable fighters who all played hot potato with the belt. This all came to an end with the long and horrible winter of Jon Jones, when he unceremoniously slaughtered all of them and left them to fight each other as broken husks in bad fights forever. Now he’s out of the picture due to his own fuckups and Cormier’s already beaten two of the three most likely next challengers for the belt.

Current champ: Daniel “DC” CormierCurrent contenders: Anthony “Rumble” Johnson, Glover Teixeira, Alexander Gustafsson, Jon Jones (ic) (if he can manage to worm his way out of a two-year suspension for his positive drug test and retain his meaningless interim championship, which presently seems highly unlikely.)Rising stars to watch: Lol. Alexander Gustafson’s Friend Ilir Latifi? Chris Weidman’s Friend Gian Villante? Mother Ukraine’s Friend Nikita Krylov, I guess? They’re all reasonably likeable enough and have had some fun if not bad fights, but none of them are really particularly good.

Middleweight: 185 lbs
Middleweight has been a wild ride since Anderson was dethroned, but actually that owns. There are a lot of good and cool fighters there who all have very realistic shots at a title within the near future.

Welterweight: 170 lbs
Similar to middleweight, this division lost a long-time dominant champ in Goerges St-Pierre a few years ago and has been all the more interesting for it ever since. Aside from Johny Hendricks, this division has been ruled by Robbie Lawler, who is insanely loving awesome to watch although in my honest opinion he should have lost two of his three winning title fights in that time. I am not complaining too much though because it means I get to watch more kick-rear end Lawler fights.

Lightweight: 155 lbs
Historically lightweight has been a great division that never got enough respect from many drive-by fans. Currently it’s kind of in a weird state where it’s hard to define a very long contender list, but it will shake itself out.

Featherweight, 145 lbs
Featherweight’s finally getting some long overdue attention due to the massive popularity of Conor McGregor, but because McGregor is taking two Diaz fights in a row at welterweight for no good reason there’s a bit of a logjam at the top. It’s a good division though.

Women’s bantamweight
This division has struggled with its image as it was the first women’s division in the UFC, which means it was the first opportunity for women to eventually make money in MMA, which means that the talent pool the UFC had to bring in was largely populated by hobbyists who couldn’t afford any decent degree of training. Now it’s in the midst of a big power vacuum left by Ronda Rousey losing the title and needing a lot of time off to both recover and do movies.

Mens’ flyweight: 125 lbs
This division is full of tiny, tiny men. Many of them are good, but many of them have already been wiped out by the champ, so few of them left have any compelling tidbits to add to the title equation.

Current champ: Demetrious “Mighty Mouse” JohnsonCurrent contenders: Wilson Reis, *crickets*List of good fighters Mighty Mouse has already owned but could easily be champ one day should Mighty Mouse move to bantamweight for a Cruz rematch or retire to be a professional Twitch streamer: Joseph Benavidez, Kyoji Horiguchi, Henry Cejudo, John Dodson if he returns from exile imposed by King Johnson.

Women’s flyweight
Technically this division doesn’t exist as a whole yet, and there has only been one w125 fight in the UFC. They’re talking about actually adding it in the near future though.Women’s flyweight fighters: Joanne “Jojo” Calderwood, Valerie Letourneau

Women’s strawweight, 115 lbs
This division in general is more talent rich than w135, though it also looks like it’s going to have a longtime dominant champ at this point.

I heard the Chinese have bought Conor McGregor for $4.2 billion USD. While Conor will surely die of tuberculosis in a Shanghai whorehouse as a result of this sale, what does it mean for the rest of the UFC?
It is true that the ]UFC has been sold for$ 4+ bil. While there was quite a bit of Chinese skin in that game as co-investors, that bid was also spearheaded by talent and investment agency WME-INC (co-owned by the guy who inspired Entourage) and a number of other investors, including NE Patriots owner Robert Kraft. Dana White was technically bought out of his original 9% share of the company for several hundred million, but was also signed for another five-year stint as the company president for 10% of the net profits earned in that time. Reports are White is building his Scrooge McDuck money pit in Boston. The Fertitta brothers, who originally were majority owners of the UFC, will also retain a minority share of the company going forward. No one really knows what the long-term might look like here, especially in terms of many fighters’ attempts at unionization that had previously been blocked by the Fertittas or the slightly [url= http://www.mmamania.com/2016/6/24/1...s-effect-on-mma]contentious[/url] possibility of the Ali Act being widened to include MMA, but in the short-term they say nothing much is going to change and I mostly believe that. There are some questions that everyone has right now though, like what will Dana White be like when given free reins after he has historically had Lorenzo to act as good cop to his bad cop, or what will Ronda Rousey continuing to have WME-Inc as her talent agency be like while they are now her bosses, (because that sure as poo poo seems like a conflict of interest to me.)

Bluedeanie, I am completely captivated by this fake, gay and sweaty sport you and your approximately 12 internet friends have discussed at length in a small corner of a comedy website. What are some other organizations besides MMA that I can follow, so I can continue to mindlessly consume sanctioned violence well beyond even the hundreds of bouts the UFC puts on each year?

We have a B-league thread that acts both as a news and discussion platform for the smaller shows and a low-volume GDT for all the various lower-level MMA cards that take place.

Right now there is one big b-league organization though, and that’s Bellator. Since being taken over by former Strikeforce President Scott Coker, Bellator has specialized in putting on freakshow fights that lots of people want to see. Within the last year they had the trilogy match between Royce Gracie and Ken Shamrock, the two opponents in the very first UFC finale in 1993. They’re also currently facing litigation regarding allegedly falsifying fighters’ medical records and putting events on in unregulated Native American reservation territories and states with absolute dogshit athletic commissions so they can get away with it. This is bolstered by the fact that they recently put on Kimbo Slice vs. Dada 5000, a bout where in the time frame from between the opening bell to four months after the fight, both fighters literally died a combined total of three times, and one of them stayed dead.

Another worth mentioning is Invicta FC, a small all-women’s promotion based out of Kansas City. It acts as a quasi-official feeder league to the UFC and all of their cards are broadcast on Fight Pass.

Speaking of which, is Fight Pass worth it?
If you’re in the US, hell yeah. It’s anywhere from $7-10 a month depending on how long you sign up for, it’s got at least a few live prelims for every event and occasionally whole Fight Pass exclusive cards, it’s got live events from other organizations like Invicta and Shooto that have signed special broadcast deals with the UFC, and perhaps most importantly it has the entire fight library of not only the UFC but all of the major organizations it absorbed (Pride, WEC and Strikeforce) and other organizations including K1. That’s a hell of a deal if you’re a new fight fan who wants to get caught up.

Outside of the US, it’s a mixed bag due to various blackouts based on the UFC’s numerous international broadcast deals. In some countries like Canada it’s pretty much the same product, but in countries like Germany it’s almost completely worthless. Look into it for your country before buying.

What older fights should I watch?This thread is extremely good if you want Fight Pass listings. handsome only face posted his own list in this thread that is very good from the past two years. If I were to call any two fights out beyond what I mentioned in the UFC 200 recaps for each fighter, it’d have to be the single fight that took me from a casual viewer to probably lifelong fan, Chris Leben vs. Yoshihiro Akiyama, and the all-time great fight Robbie Lawler vs. Rory MacDonald 2. I will not ruin anything telling you anything about them, but I beg you to watch them if nothing else.

I AM FROM JOHANESSBURG AND EK SÊ WHY DON’T YOU TELL ME HOW TO WATCH THE FIGHTS IN MY COUNTRY IN THE GDT YA DOMKOP DWANKIE
Because there are a loving billion different broadcast deals unique to each country in the world and there’s just no way for me to include all of that in a GDT, I am sorry but please google that yourself.

Bluedeanie fucked around with this message at Jul 19, 2016 around 04:17

Looks dumb, fights dumb, has had inexplicable success despite fighting dumb. Fights like he watched one Dominic Cruz fight and went "hey that style is cool" and tried to imitate it without the technical chops to do it, but gets away with it often because heavyweights are bad.

anderson's ufc debut vs. leben is over ten years old at this point, but it's still basically a perfect 49-second encapsulation of how anderson changed mma forever. sprawl-and-brawl (primarily relying on your striking ability while moving forward, and also being good enough at wrestling to defend the takedown) which was popularized by guys like chuck liddell and wanderlei silva had been the dominant style of fighting in mma for a long time. anderson was one of the first to become truly good at counter fighting and it took mma another seven or so years to actually catch up to him. he looked basically completely unbeatable for those seven years, save for his classic fight with chael sonnen and the occasional extremely boring and passive fight against anyone who were as content to stand back as anderson.

This reminds me of the post-episode recaps in the Doctor Who thread. After this it might be fun to just write up shorter versions of this for every event and put them in the main, monthly thread (with a link to the GDT).

Never knew all that about Mark Hunt. That's crazy. Makes me all the more sad he lost.

I too am a little confused by the hatred for Browne, but that was the first time I've seen Velasquez fight and he was a loving beast.

Being sad about Mark Hunt losing is the correct answer.

People are probably going to disagree with me on this - and they do often - but I'd say that the Cain Velasquez of Cain-Bigfoot 1, Cain-JDS 2, Cain-Bigfoot 2, and Cain-JDS 3 is the greatest heavyweight in the sport's history. Goddamn terrifying. If you thought that what he did to Browne was scary, go watch Cain-Bigfoot 1.

I started watching UFC with UFC100 which is about as great a card as any to get someone hooked. I've lurked in the UFC thread occasionally adding white noise. I would encourage any newbies to post regardless of whether your opinion is terrible. I don't think there's a single poster here who doesn't harbour at least one 'contested' opinion on a fighter/fight.

Bluedeanie, thanks for making this thread.

Should add to the OP some of PSPMMA's meme's to help newcomers:
- Atom: has bad opinions about Chael Sonnen and Jon Jones
- Always Bad: a terrible meme wherein there can be only winners and always-bad's. Basically when you lose a fight you become bad. There are exceptions to this rule.
- Should've been a Computer Programmer instead
- etc

More Rowdy Ringsports/PSP MMA memes:
There was a dude who went to the McGregor fight in Dublin's Conor after party where he spent most of his time talking there posting on SA about how orange girls want to have sex with the fighters, who have very bad posture and terrible backs. So we rarely call back to that and laugh.

There was also a dude who suggested Carlos Condit, a notably exciting and dangerous fighter who always fights his heart out and loves a slugfest, is very milquetoast. He also said that he's boring because he's white and middle class or something. This tends to pop up when Condit fights (watch his entire fight history, he's awesome.)

Notable SA MMA event: the Colemancaust, where posters collectively lost a grand or two by deciding that +350 odds for 44 year old Mark Coleman to beat Randy Couture was just too good an offer to pass up.

More Rowdy Ringsports/PSP MMA memes:
There was a dude who went to the McGregor fight in Dublin's Conor after party where he spent most of his time talking there posting on SA about how orange girls want to have sex with the fighters, who have very bad posture and terrible backs. So we rarely call back to that and laugh.

Cain is back, baby — at least until he blows his knee out again because Daniel Cormier hit him with a sledgehammer in their weekly yoga session.

To new guys -- this was not a joke about a lovers' quarrel; it's a joke about how hard American Kickboxing Academy (AKA) fighters train.
The gym is notorious for their guys getting injuries from hard sparring and questionable training methods and having to pull out of fights.
Posting ridiculous strength and conditioning videos from fighters is a regular meme.

To new guys -- this was not a joke about a lovers' quarrel; it's a joke about how hard American Kickboxing Academy (AKA) fighters train.
The gym is notorious for their guys getting injuries from hard sparring and questionable training methods and having to pull out of fights.
Posting ridiculous strength and conditioning videos from fighters is a regular meme.